Sessions: DOJ investigating ‘hundreds’ of potential terrorists who came to US as refugees

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement Thursday that the Justice Department is currently in the middle of hundreds of terrorism-related investigations into individuals who came to the United States as refugees.

Sessions spoke from New York City just days after terrorist Sayfullo Saipov killed eight people using a Home Depot truck in lower Manhattan.

Sessions argued the manpower and resources that go into preventing terror attacks, both at home and abroad, are strained by the inability of the Trump administration to fully carry out the president’s executive order travel ban.

“The president is determined to keep terrorists and their sympathizers from infiltrating our country,” Sessions explained, adding, “And he knows that, since 9/11, most of those convicted in our courts for international terrorism-related crimes have been foreign-born.”

The executive order was part of Trump’s “legal right,” Sessions said.

“The countries covered by this order have failed, or are unable, to provide us the information necessary for proper vetting of their nationals. How do you vet people from North Korea? How do you vet people from Syria, where war and violence continues?” Sessions argued.